The Unsettling Documentary Theatre of ‘Here There Are Blueberries’
Review by Norah Vawter
Photo of the cast of Here There Are Blueberries by DJ Corey Photography.
Here There Are Blueberries, playing at The Shakespeare Theatre after its world premiere at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse, is compelling, thought-provoking, and tightly written. Conceived and directed by the celebrated Moisés Kaufman (Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, The Laramie Project) and written by Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, the play examines the extraordinarily, disturbingly ordinary lives of Nazis working at Auschwitz during World War II—and the twenty-first century historians at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here in D.C. who find themselves trying to make sense of the past.
The massive power and emotional impact of Here There Are Blueberries snuck up on me. Despite the subject matter, it’s a cerebral play. That morphed into feeling unsettled, unmoored, and finally deeply moving. I realized the emotional impact has been building all this time—slowly, sneakily, in the background. In fact this was one of the most impressive works I’ve seen on stage in a while—both in its technical mastery of an innovative form, and its power to rock me to my core.
Photo of Kathleen Chalfant, Nemuna Ceesay (background), Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, and Elizabeth Stahlmann in Here There Are Blueberries by DJ Corey Photography.
This level of subtle craftsmanship is a testament to the strength of collaboration at work in Tectonic Theater Project, Kaufman’s innovative theatre-making company. Members of Tectonic, including Scott Barrow, Amy Marie Seidel, Frances Uku, and Grant James Varjas, collaborated with the playwrights to create and devise this new work in what they refer to as a “collaborative laboratory setting.” What’s emerged from the laboratory is a decidedly whole, unified piece of art. Likewise, the scenic, lighting, sound, and projection design—by Derek McLane, David Lander, Bobby McElver, and David Bengali, respectively—works beautifully and organically together.
The story begins with a mysterious album arriving at the Holocaust Museum containing photographs taken at Auschwitz during the war, a rare find as the Germans hid evidence of the atrocities at their most notorious death camp. Rebecca Erbelding (Elizabeth Stahlmann), a young archivist at the Museum, sees something important in these photos and fights for the chance to study them, as the pictures are projected on stage behind the actors. The visual effect is stunning and surreal as the black and white photos are projected at sizes many times greater than life size, looming over the actors and dominating the imagination.
But Erbelding, and the other historians, are baffled by these images, which do not include a single prisoner, or evidence of the camp’s atrocities. Off camera, but not far away, people are being marched to gas chambers and exterminated. On camera, Nazis (including young women who work as secretaries and telegram operators) are hanging out casually as colleagues, touring the concentration camp with the same energy you might tour a factory, enjoying delicious blueberries, and even vacationing within the grounds of Auschwitz.
Photo of Maboud Ebrahimzadeh and Charlie Thurston in Here There Are Blueberries by DJ Corey Photography
In an interesting twist, the photographs are shared with the public and a German businessman, Tilman Taub (Maboud Ebrahimzadeh) recognizes his grandfather in one of the photos. He had known that his grandfather was a Nazi, but had no clue he’d been at Auschwitz and is horrified at the implications. He calls the Museum, beginning a personal odyssey as he seeks the truth of his family’s complicity with the Third Reich.
The ensemble cast is a solid unit, with each actor playing multiple roles. There are no weak links. Elizabeth Stahlmann’s earnest, unflinchingly curious portrayal of Erbelding anchors the play. Other standout performances include Ebrahimzadeh, Charlie Thurston, and Grant James Varjas (all three portraying descendants of individual Nazis we see in the album) with an abundance of humanity, complexity, and inner conflict. But it’s important to note that these actors and the rest of the company all play multiple roles, morphing effortlessly into different personas without costume changes or scene changes. The effect is that we’re often not focusing on one performance but on the collaborative performance of the entire cast. It’s a true synergy, and a testament to the talent and collaborative spirit of everyone on stage (and off).
Photo of Elizabeth Stahlmann in Here There Are Blueberries by DJ Corey Photography.
The album at the center of the play is a real album, a personal scrapbook of sorts belonging to Karl Höcker, the right-hand man to the head of Auschwitz from 1944 until he escaped shortly before the camp’s liberation. All pictures projected onstage are real. The album was donated to the Holocaust Museum and made public in 2007. In fact, the story unfolding onstage closely follows reality, and all characters are based on real people. Dialogue often comes directly from archival transcripts.
Here There Are Blueberries is the product of lengthy interviews with Holocaust Museum staff and extensive research. It’s a type of stagecraft known as documentary theatre. This play is also part of the tradition of experimental theatre that harkens back to Modernist playwrights like Bertolt Brecht—and refuses to lull audiences into a sense of complacency. We’re not supposed to have that lovely feeling you get watching Shakespeare, where you get lost in the story and you can imagine you’re watching a real world up on stage. Instead, in this play, we’re constantly reminded that we’re watching a performance. The goal is to provoke and unsettle, even to bring about social change, but never to soothe.
Photo of Elizabeth Stahlmann, Erika Rose, Grant James Varjas, and Maboud Ebrahimzadeh in Here There Are Blueberries by DJ Corey Photography.
Moisés Kaufman’s father was a Holocaust survivor who hid in a basement during the war to evade capture. Kaufman has referred to himself as an “activist in art” and elaborated on this concept in a recent interview with American Theatre. The writer and director said, “Every time that you share a story with the world you become an activist, because your story is either reinforcing or questioning the status quo. I think that it’s important for artists to be aware of that power that we have.”
This play asks: Were these people monsters, or were they just people? How could Höcker create a keepsake album to remember his time at Auschwitz? Why would anyone want to remember this place?
Thousands of SS men and women worked at Auschwitz. All of these people, former bank tellers and bakers and schoolgirls, couldn’t have been born psychopaths. For every sadistic, bloodthirsty Nazi there must have been many more Nazis who started out as just regular people. How did those people end up working at a place like Auschwitz? What do we think about a teenage secretary who sent telegrams with information about how many people were gassed, or the doctor who tried to make conditions better for prisoners, but also chose which ones went to the gas chambers? Kaufman and Gronich are asking us to consider how ordinary people come to engage in evil, even in genocide. They ask us to look inward. What would I have done? What about you?
Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.
Here There Are Blueberries runs through May 28 at The Shakespeare Theatre’s Harman Hall—610 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20004. For tickets, call the box office at (202) 547-1122 or purchase them online. Masks are recommended for all performances.
Norah Vawter is DCTRENDING’s local authors editor. She has an M.F.A. in creative writing from George Mason University and is querying her first novel. She lives with her family in Northern Virginia. Follow her on Twitter @norahvawter, where she shares words and works of D.C. area writers every Friday.